Beach Read

“OH, COME ON, Gussy. Get in!” Maggie splashed water toward the edge of the pool, but Gus merely stepped back, shaking his head and grinning.

“What, are you afraid it will mess up your perm?” Pete teased from the grill.

“And then we’ll find out you have a perm?” I added. When his eyes cut to me, a thrill went through me, followed by the disappointing realization that the saggy one-piece Maggie had lent me made me look like a waterlogged Popsicle tangled in toilet paper.

“Maybe I’m afraid that once I get in, no one will set a timer and remind me to get out and use the bathroom,” Gus said.

At the far end of the pool, a stringy little boy and girl cannonballed in from opposite sides, their splash soaking us. Gus looked back to me. “And then there’s that.”

“What?” I said. “Fun? Are you afraid it’s contagious?”

“No, I’m afraid the pool’s already totally full of pee. You two enjoy bathing in it.” Gus went back inside and I tried not to keep checking every minute or so whether he’d emerged again.

Maggie found a beach ball, and we started hitting it back and forth. Soon enough, it was four o’ clock, and since Sonya was coming at five, I excused myself to change. Maggie hopped spryly out too and grabbed the yellow towels we’d left on the cement around the pool.

She draped one over my shoulders before I could grab it from her and led the way inside. “You can use the upstairs bathroom,” she said with a sweet smile that seemed almost like a wink.

“Oh,” I said uncomfortably. “Okay.” I gathered my clothes and went to the stairs.

The steps were creaky, wooden, and narrow. They turned back on themselves halfway before depositing me into the upstairs hallway. The bathroom sat at the end, a pink tile monstrosity that was so ugly it became cute again. There were two doors on one side of the hall and a third on the other, all of them closed.

It was almost time to leave. I was going to have to knock on them until I found him. I tried not to feel embarrassed or hurt, but it wasn’t easy.

From your first real conversation, Gus made it clear he wasn’t the type to expect anything from, January. The kind not even you were capable of romanticizing.

I toweled off and dressed in the bathroom, then came out and knocked softly on the first door. No answer, so I moved to the one across the hall.

A mumbled “Yeah?” came through it, and I eased it open.

Gus was on the twin bed in the corner, legs stretched out and back propped up by the wall. To his right, the blinds were partly open, letting in streaks of light between the shadows on the floor. “Time to head out?” he asked, scratching the back of his head.

I looked around the room at the mismatched furniture, the lack of plants. On the bedside table there was a lamp that looked like a soccer ball, and across from the foot of the bed, the little blue bookcase there was full of copies, US editions and foreign ones, of Gus’s books. “Come here to ponder your own mortality?” I asked, tipping my head toward the bookshelf.

“Just had a headache,” he said. I went toward the bed to sit beside him but he stood before I reached it. “I’d better say bye. You should too, if you don’t want Pete to blacklist you.” And then he was leaving the room and I was left there alone. I went closer to the bookshelf. Four framed pictures sat along the top. One of a baby with dark eyes surrounded by fluffy fake clouds and under a soft focus. The next was Pete and Maggie, a good thirty years younger, with sunglasses on top of their heads and a little boy in sandals standing between them. Over his head, between Pete’s and Maggie’s shoulders, a sliver of the Cinderella Castle was visible.

The third picture was much older, a sepia-toned portrait of a grinning little girl with dark curls and one dimple. The fourth was a team picture, little boys and girls in purple jerseys all lined up next to a younger, slimmer Pete, wearing a whistle around her neck and a cap low over her eyes. I found Gus right away, thin and messy with a bashful smile that favored one side.

Voices filtered up from downstairs then. “… sure you can’t stay?” Pete was saying.

I set the photo down and left the room, closing the door on my way out.

We were quiet for the first couple of minutes of the drive home, but Gus finally asked, “Did you have fun?”

“Pete and Maggie are wonderful,” I answered noncommittally.

Gus nodded. “They are.”

“Okay,” I said, unsure where to go from there.

His hard gaze shifted my way, softening a little, but he jammed his mouth shut and didn’t look my way again.

I stared at the buildings whipping past the window. The businesses had mostly closed for the day, but there’d been a parade while we were at Pete’s, and vendor carts still lined either side of the street, families clad in red, white, and blue milling between them with bags of popcorn and American-flag pinwheels in their hands.

I had so many questions but all of them were nebulous, un-askable. In my own story, I didn’t want to be the heroine who let some silly miscommunication derail something obviously good, but in my real life, I felt like I’d rather risk that and keep my dignity than keep laying everything out for Gus until he finally came right out and admitted he didn’t want me the way I wanted him.

More than once, I thought miserably. Something real, even if a little misshapen.

When we reached the curb in front of our houses (markedly later than we would have, due to the increased pedestrian traffic), Gus said, “Let me know about tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I said.

“The New Eden trip.” He unlocked the car door. “If you still want to go, let me know.”

This was all it had taken? He was now totally disinterested in me, even as a research companion?

He climbed out of the car. That was it. Five PM, and we were going our separate ways. On the Fourth of July, when I knew no one in town apart from him and his aunts.

“Why wouldn’t I want to go?” I asked, fuming. “I said I wanted to.” He was already halfway to his porch. He turned back and shrugged.

“Do you want me to?” I demanded.

“If you want,” he said.

“That’s not what I asked you. I asked you if you want me to come with you tomorrow.”

“I want you to do whatever you want to.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “What time,” I barked.

“Nine-ish,” he said. “It’ll probably take all day.”

“Great. See you then.”

I went into my house and paced angrily, and when that didn’t do the trick, I sat at my computer and wrote furiously until night fell. When I couldn’t get out another bitter word, I went onto the deck and watched the fireworks streak over the lake, their glitter raining down on the water like falling stars. I tried not to look Gus’s way, but the glow of his computer in the kitchen caught my eye every once in a while.

He was still working at midnight when Shadi texted me: Well, that’s it. I’m in love. RIP me.

Same.

I AWOKE TO a house-shaking boom of thunder and rolled out of bed. It was eight o’clock, but the room was still dark from the storm clouds.

Shivering, I dragged my robe off the chair at the vanity and hurried into the kitchen to put the water on. Great slashes of lightning leapt from the sky to hit the churning lake, the light fluttering against the back doors like a series of camera flashes. I watched it in a stupor. I’d never seen a storm out over a massive body of water, at least outside of a movie. I wondered if it would affect Gus’s plans.

Maybe it’d be better if it did. If he could effectively ghost me. I’d call and cancel the event at the bookstore, and we’d never see each other, and he could stick to his precious once-only non-dating rule, and I could go to Ohio and marry an insurance man, whatever that meant.

Behind me, the kettle whistled.

I made myself some coffee and sat down to work, and again the words poured out of me. I had reached the forty-thousand-word mark. The family’s world was coming apart. Eleanor’s father’s second family had shown up at the circus. Her mother had had a rough encounter with a guest and was more on edge than ever. Eleanor had slept with the boy from Tulsa and been caught sneaking back into her tent, only for the mechanic, Nick, to cover for her.

And the clowns. They’d nearly been outed after a tender moment in the woods behind the fairgrounds, and they’d gotten into a huge argument because of it. One of them had left for the bar in town and wound up sleeping it off in a holding cell.

I didn’t know how things were going to come together but I knew they needed to get worse. It was nine fifteen by then, and I hadn’t heard from Gus. I went and sat on the unmade bed, staring out the window toward his study. I could see warm golden light pouring from lampshades through his window.

I texted him. Will this weather interfere with research?

It probably won’t be a comfortable trip, he said. But I’m still going.

And I’m still invited? I asked.

Of course. A minute later he texted again. Do you have hiking boots?

Absolutely not, I told him.

What size do you wear?

7 ½, why? Do you think we wear the same size?

I’ll grab some from Pete, he said, then, If you still want to come.

Dear GOD, are you trying to kick me out of this? I typed back.

It took him much longer to answer than usual and the wait started making me feel sick. I used the time to get dressed. Finally he replied, No. I just don’t want you to feel obligated.

I waffled, debating what to do. He texted me again: Of course I want you to come, if you want to.

Not of course, I replied, simultaneously angry and relieved. You haven’t made that clear at all.

Is it clear now? he asked.

Clear-ER.

I want you to come, he said.

Then go get the shoes.

Bring your laptop if you want, he replied. I might need to be there for a while.

Twenty minutes later, Gus honked from the curb, and I put on my rain jacket and ran through the storm. He leaned over to open the door before I’d even gotten there and I slammed it shut again behind me, pulling the hood down. The car was warm, the windows were foggy, and the back seat was loaded with flashlights, an oversized backpack, a smaller waterproof one, and a pair of muddy hiking boots with red shoelaces. When he saw me looking at them, Gus said, “They’re eights—will that work?”

When I looked back at him, he almost seemed to startle, but it was such a small gesture I might’ve imagined it. “Lucky for you I brought a pair of thick socks, just in case.” I pulled the balled-up socks from my jacket pocket and tossed them at him. He caught them and turned them over in his hands.

“What would you have done if the boots were too small?”

“Cut off my toes,” I said flatly.

Finally he cracked a smile, looking up at me from under his thick, inky eyelashes. His hair was swept off his forehead per usual and a few raindrops had splattered across his skin when I’d jumped into the car. As he swallowed, the dimple in his cheek appeared, then vanished from sight.

I hated what that did to me. A tiny carrot should really not overpower the instinct in my dumb bunny brain screaming, RUN.

“Ready?” Gus said.

I nodded. He faced forward in his seat and pulled away from our houses. The rain had slowed enough that the windshield wipers could squeak across the glass at an easy pace, and we fell into a fairly comfortable rhythm, talking about our books and the rain and the blue punch. We moved off that last topic fairly quickly, neither of us apparently willing to broach Yesterday.

“Where are we going?” I asked, an hour in, when he pulled off the highway. From my online search, I knew New Eden was at least another hour off.

“Not a murder spot,” he promised.

“Is it a surprise?”

“If you want it to be. But it might be a disappointing one.”

“The world’s largest ball of yarn?” I guessed.

His gaze cut toward me, narrowed in appraisal. “That would disappoint you?”

“No,” I said, heart leaping traitorously. “But I thought you might think it would.”

“There are certain wonders that no man can face without weeping, January. A giant ball of yarn is one of those.”

“Okay, you can tell me,” I said.

“We’re getting gas.”

I looked at him. “Okay, that is disappointing.”

“Much like life.”

“Not this again,” I said.

It was another sixty-three minutes before Gus pulled off the highway again near Arcadia, and then another fifteen miles on wooded two-lane roads before he pulled over onto a muddy shoulder and told me to stuff my computer in the dry bag.

“Now this is definitely a murder spot,” I said when we got out. As far as I could tell there was nothing here but the steep bank to our right and the trees above it.

“It’s probably someone’s,” Gus said. He leaned back into the car. “But not mine. Now change your shoes. We have to walk the rest of the way.”

Gus pulled on the bigger backpack and took one of the flashlights, leaving me to grab the other bag once I’d gotten the socks and shoes on. “This way,” he called, climbing straight up the muddy ridge to the woods. He turned to offer me a hand, and after I slipped in the mud thrice, he managed to hoist me up onto the path. At least, it appeared to be a path, although there were no signs or visible reasons for a path to start there.

The forest was quiet apart from our tromping and our breaths and the underlying drizzling of rain speckling the leaves. I kept my hood up, but in here, the rain mostly made it to us in the form of fine mist. I’d gotten used to the blues and grays of the lake, the yellow-golds of the sun spilling over the water and the tops of the trees, but in here, everything was rich and dark, every shade of green the most saturated version of itself.

This was the most at peace I’d felt in two days, if not all year. Whatever weirdness was between Gus and me was placed on hold as we wandered through the silent temple of the woods. Sweat built up around my armpits, along my hairline, and through my underwear, until I stopped and took the jacket off. Without a word, Gus stopped and peeled his off too. I watched an olive sliver of his flat stomach appear as his shirt caught around his shoulders. I looked away as he pulled it back down.

We picked our backpacks up and kept walking. My thighs began to burn, and the gathering sweat and rain plastered my tank top and my jeans to my skin. At one point, the rain picked up again, and we ducked into a shallow pseudocave for a few minutes until the showers let up. The gray sky made it hard to tell how much time had passed, but we must have spent at least a couple of hours marching through the woods until the trees finally thinned and the charred skeleton of New Eden came into sight ahead.

“Holy shit,” I whispered, stopping beside Gus. He nodded. “Have you seen it before?”

“Only in pictures,” he said, and started toward the nearest smoke-blackened trailer. The second fire, unlike the one from the lightning strike, hadn’t been an accident. The police investigation had found that every building had been doused in gasoline. The Prophet, a man who called himself Father Abe, had died outside the last building to catch flames, leading authorities to speculate that he’d been the one to light the place up.

Gus swallowed. His voice came out hoarse as he pointed toward a trailer on the right. “That was the nursery. They went first.”

Went, I thought.

Burned, I thought. I turned to hide that I was gagging.

“People are awful,” Gus said behind me.

I swallowed my stomach bile. My eyes stung. The back of my nose burned. Gus glanced over his shoulder at me, and his gaze softened. “Want to set up the tent?”

He must’ve seen the face I made, because he added quickly, “So we can use our computers.” He nodded toward the darkly churning sky as he slid his backpack off. “Don’t think this is going to let up any time soon.”

“Not here though,” I said. “It feels wrong to put a tent in all this.”

He nodded agreement and we kept moving, hiked off until the site was no longer visible. Until I could almost pretend we were in a different forest, far away from what had happened at New Eden. As Gus pulled tent poles from the bag, I came forward to help. My hands were shaking, from both the cold and the unease of being here, and I poured all of my focus into piecing the tent together, blocking out the memory of the burned remnants of the cult.

The distraction only lasted a few minutes, and then the tent was finished, all our stuff tucked safely inside, except the little notepad and pencil Gus pulled from his pocket as we made our way back to the site.

He shot me a tentative look I couldn’t interpret, then started toward one of the trailers, or rather three that had been cobbled together with plywood-and-tarp hallways. I swallowed a knot and followed, but after a few steps, he stopped and turned back to me. “You can go back to the tent,” he said gruffly. “You don’t need to see this.”

A knot rose in my throat. Obviously I didn’t want to see this. But it bothered me that he’d say I didn’t need to while still planning to explore it himself. I could tell he hated being here too. And yet here he was, facing it.

That was how it always was. He never looked away from any of it. Maybe he thought someone had to bear witness to the dark, or maybe he hoped that if he stared into the pitch-black long enough, his eyes would adjust and he’d see answers hiding in it.

This is why bad things happen, the dark would say. This is how it all makes sense.

I couldn’t go hide from this. I couldn’t leave Gus here alone. If he was descending into the darkness, I was going to tie a rope between our waists and go down with him.

I shook my head and went to stand behind him, his dark eyes dipping to study me, his rain-speckled lashes curved low and dark and heavy against his olive cheeks.

There was so much I wanted to say, but all I could get out was, “I’m here.”

And when I said it, his brow furrowed and his jaw tensed, and he peered at me in that particular Gus way that made the knot in my throat inch higher.

He nodded and turned back to the trailer, tipping his chin toward it. “Father Abe’s place. Apparently he’d seek counsel from a group of angels, so he needed the room.”

I tore my gaze from Gus to the sooty trailer. It instantly made me feel woozy and unmoored, like the air here was still overloaded with carbon dioxide and ash.

Why do bad things happen? I thought. How will it all make sense? But no great truth appeared to me. There was no good reason this horrible thing had happened, and no reason Gus’s life had been what it was either. Dammit, R.E.M. was right: Every single person on the planet had to take turns hurting. Sometimes all you could do was hold on to each other tight until the dark spat you back out.

Gus blinked clear of his solemn haze and crouched, balancing his notepad on his knee and scribbling notes, and I stood beside him, legs wobbling but eyes open. I’m here, I thought at him. I’m here and I see it too.

We moved around the site like that, silent as ghosts, Gus guarding his notes from the rain as it soaked through our clothes and skin right down to the bone.

When we’d circled the whole plot of land once, he headed back toward Father Abe’s Frankensteined trailer, glancing at me for the first time in the last two hours. “It’s freezing,” he said. “You should go back to the tent.”

It was freezing—the wind had picked up, and the temperature had begun dropping until my jeans felt like ice packs against my skin. But no part of me thought that was why he was pushing me away.

“Please, January,” Gus said quietly, and it was the please that unraveled me. What was I doing? I cared about Gus, but if he didn’t want me to hold on to him, I had to let go.

“Okay,” I said through chattering teeth. “I’ll wait in the tent.”

Gus nodded, then turned and trudged off. Heart stung, I walked back to the tent, knelt, and crawled inside. I curled into the fetal position to warm myself up and closed my eyes, listening to the barrage of rain on the fabric overhead. I tried to let all my thoughts and feelings slip away from me, but instead they seemed to swell as I drifted toward sleep, a dark, frothy wave of emotions pulling me toward a restless dream.

And then the whine of the zipper was tugging me out of it, and I opened my unfocused eyes to find Gus stooped in the tent’s doorway, dripping.

“Hey.” My voice came out gravelly. I sat up, smoothing my wet hair.

“Sorry that took so long,” he said, climbing in and zipping the door up behind him. “I needed to get thorough pictures, draw a map, all that.” He sat beside me and unzipped his rain jacket, which he’d put back on since we parted ways.

I shrugged. “It’s fine. You said it would be an all-day thing.”

His gaze lifted to the tent ceiling. “And I meant that,” he said. “All day. The tent was just a precaution for the weather. Too many years in Michigan.”

I nodded as if I understood. I thought I might.

“Anyway.” He looked back toward my feet. “If you’re ready, we can hike back.”

We sat in silence for a moment. “Gus,” I said, tired.

“Yeah?”

“Will you just tell me what’s going on?”

He folded his legs in and leaned back on his palms, staring steadily at me. He took a deep breath. “Which part?”

“All of it,” I said. “I want to know all of it.”

He shook his head. “I told you. You can ask me anything.”

“Okay.” I swallowed a fist-sized knot. “What was the deal with that phone call?”

“The deal?”

“Don’t make me say it,” I whispered miserably. But he still seemed confused. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes. “Was it Naomi?”

“No,” he said, but it wasn’t No, how could you think that? It sounded more like No, but she still calls me. Or No, but it was someone else I love.

My stomach cinched tight but I forced myself to open my eyes.

Gus’s brow had wrinkled, and a raindrop slid down his sharp cheekbone. “It was my friend Kayla Markham.”

“Kayla?” My voice sounded so shaky, pathetic. Gus’s best friend since high school, Markham, was a woman?

Sudden understanding crossed Gus’s face. “It’s not like—she’s my lawyer. She’s friends with Naomi too—she’s handling our divorce.”

“Oh.” It sounded small and stupid, exactly how I felt. “Your mutual friend is handling your divorce?”

“I know it’s weird.” He mussed his hair. “I mean, it’s like she’s totally impartial. She throws me this big-ass birthday party every year but then I have to see pictures of her and Naomi in Cancún for a week. We never talk about it, and yet she’s handling the divorce, and it’s just …”

“So weird?” I guessed.

He let out his breath in a rush. “So weird.”

A little bit of the pressure in my chest released, but regardless of who Kayla Markham was to Gus, it didn’t change how he’d acted yesterday. “If it’s not about her, then why are you trying to get rid of me?” I asked, voice trembling and quiet.

Gus’s eyes darkened. “January.” He shook his head. “I’m not doing that.”

“You are,” I said. I’d been telling myself not to cry, but it was no use. As soon as I said it, the tears were welling, voice wrenching upward. “You ignored me yesterday. You tried to cancel today. You sent me back to the tent when I tried to stay with you and—you didn’t want me to come. I should have listened.”

“January, no.” Gus roughly cupped the sides of my face, holding my tear-filled gaze to his. “Not at all.” He kissed my forehead. “It wasn’t about you. Not even a little bit.” He kissed my tear-streaked left cheek, caught another falling tear with his mouth on my right.

He pulled me in against his chest and wrapped his arms around me, covering me with rain-dampened heat as he nuzzled his nose and mouth against the top of my head.

“I feel so stupid,” I whimpered. “I thought you really—”

“I do,” he said quickly, drawing back from me. “January, I didn’t want you here today because I knew it was going to be hard. I didn’t want to be the reason you spent a whole day in a torched-out graveyard. I didn’t want to put you through this. That’s all.”

He brushed some hair behind my ear, and the sweetness of the gesture only made my tears fall faster. “But you didn’t want me at Pete’s either,” I said, voice breaking. “You invited me, and then we slept together and you changed your mind.”

His mouth juddered into a look of open hurt. “I wanted you there,” he all but whispered, and when a fresh tear slipped down my cheek, he caught it with his thumb.

“Look,” he said, “this divorce has been so stupidly drawn out. I waited for her to file, and she just didn’t, and I don’t know—it didn’t matter to me, so I didn’t pursue it until a few weeks ago. She told me she’d sign the papers if I met her for a drink, so I went to Chicago to see her, and when I left, I thought it was settled. Yesterday, Markham called and told me Naomi changed her mind. She wants ‘some details hammered out’—I mean, the only things we owned together were some overpriced copper pots, which she has, and our cars. It shouldn’t be complicated, but I put it off too long, and …”

He rubbed at his forehead. “And then Markham asked what was new with me, and I told her about you, about how you were here for the summer, and she thought it was a bad idea—”

“Bad idea?” My gut roiled. That didn’t sound impartial. It sounded very partial.

“Because you’re leaving,” Gus said in a rush. “And she knows—she knows how stupid I am when it comes to you, how crazy I was for you in college, and—”

“What are you talking about?” I challenged. “You never even spoke to me.”

He let out a humorless laugh. “Because you hated me!” he blurted. “I’d come late to class so I could choose my seat based on where you sat, and I’d rush out afterward so I could walk with you, ask to borrow pens every day for a week, fucking drop books Three Stooges–style when you hung back so it would just be the two of us, and you’d never even look at me! Even when we were workshopping your stories and I was talking right to you, you wouldn’t look at me. I could never figure out what I’d done, and then I saw you at that party, and you were finally looking at me and—that’s my point! I’m an idiot when it comes to you!”

I was reeling with the information, replaying every interaction I could remember and trying to see them how he’d described. But almost all of those had just been me staring at him, looking away when he noticed, burning with jealousy and frustration and a little lust. I could believe that maybe Gus had wanted me since before the infamous frat party, because I’d been attracted to him too, but anything more than that didn’t compute.

“Gus,” I said, “you only critiqued my stories. I was a joke to you.”

It was possible I’d never seen such a blatant expression of shock. “Because I was an asshole!” he said, which didn’t exactly explain things, but then he went on. “I was a twenty-three-year-old elitist dick who thought everyone in our class was wasting my time except you! I thought it was obvious how I felt about you, and your writing. That’s the point! I never knew what you were thinking then, and I still have no idea—”

“What do you think me taking your pants off means?” I said.

He tugged at the hair at the crown of his head. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, what I’ve been trying to tell you since you got here,” he said breathlessly. “I don’t remember how any of this is supposed to work or what I’m supposed to do. Even before Naomi and I—January, I’m not like Jacques.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, stung.

“I’m not the kind of guy women try to date,” he said, frustrated. “I never have been. I’m the one they want to hook up with and drunk text and hang out with for a change of pace when they’ve just gotten out of seven-year relationships with doctors, and that’s fine, but I don’t want that with you, okay? I can’t do that.”

My throat squeezed tight, strangling my voice into something flimsy and weak. “That’s what you think? That this is all some kind of identity crisis for me?”

His eyes fell heavily on me, and for once I felt like I could see straight through them. That was exactly what he thought: that like our bet, Gus was something I was trying on for size while I took a break from the real me. Like I was on my own reverse Eat, Pray, Love tear that would fizzle out as quickly as it had flared up.

“I want to be your perfect fucking Fabio, January, but I can’t,” Gus went on. “I’m not.”

I’m not like Jacques, he’d said, and I’d thought he was insulting Jacques or making a dig at me for dating someone like him, but that wasn’t it at all.

Gus still thought he was missing something, some special piece other people had, the thing that made people stay, and it broke my heart a little. It broke my heart that when we were younger, he’d thought I’d never even looked at him.

I shook my head. “I don’t need you to be Fabio,” I said, voice thick with emotion, like it wasn’t the single stupidest sentence I’d uttered in my life.

“Yes, you do,” Gus said urgently. “Everything I’ve done in the last twenty-four hours has hurt you, January. You want me to be able to read you, and I can’t. You want me to know how to do this, and I don’t.”

“No,” I said. “I just want you to tell me how you feel. I want to know what it is you want.”

“I’m going to mess this up,” he said helplessly.

“Maybe!” I cried. “But that’s not what I asked. Tell me what you want, Gus. Not why you can’t have it, or what you think I want, or why you can’t give that to me. Just tell me what you want for once. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”

“I want you,” he said quietly. “I want you, in every way. I want to take you on dates and play with a fucking beach ball in a pool with you, but I’m a wreck, January.

“I’m trapped in a marriage with a woman who lives with another man, just waiting to be done. I’m on medicine. I’m in therapy. I’m trying to give up smoking for good and even to learn how to meditate—and while that’s going on, while I’m a walking dumpster fire, I want you in a way I’m not sure either of us can handle. I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want to feel what it would be like to lose you.”

He stopped for a beat. In the dim half-light of the tent his face was all stark shadows, but his liquidy dark eyes glinted as if lit from within. He took a few breaths, then said in a soft murmur, “It doesn’t mean I don’t want you, January—I’ve always wanted you. It just means I also want you to be happy, and I’m scared I could never be the person who could give you that.”

The intensity in his gaze settled, like he’d burned through every spark he had, and I loved his eyes like this too, all warm and raw and quiet. I touched the sides of his face and he looked into my eyes, still breathing hard. Warmth bubbled in my chest, spilling into my fingers as they curled around his sharp jaw.

“Then let me be happy with you, Gus,” I said and kissed him softly, like the rare and tender thing he was.

His hands swept across my back, and he pulled me closer.